Table-toppers Littlehampton, whose lead at the top was cut to 33 points after the latest round of fixtures, host second from bottom strugglers Middleton 2nd XI on Saturday.

Skipper James Askew added: “We move on to Middleton after a little blip but we have put ourselves in a good position and now we have to bounce back with a win. We need to get back to our best.”

Crawley player Razwan Hussain rubbished claims the pitch had been heavily watered in the build-up and said: "Due to the really good weather we have had in recent weeks the pitches are really dry and hard.

"We watered the pitch twice in the week so do not know how Littlehampton believe it was watered heavily before the game.

"If this was to be the case then it would have been too wet to play on. If it still hadn’t dried then why did the umpires have no objection to starting play earlier then the normal scheduled time at 11.30am?

"If we did not water the pitch then the wicket would of been dangerous to play on, but we made sure we had a wicket in the best possible shape within our possible abilities to provide as our wickets are prepared by the council and not ourselves.

"We did not use our full pace bowling attack and if we wanted to prepare a dangerous wicket and exploit it we would not have watered the pitch during the week and used our full pace attack to bowl.

"The way I see this is that both teams played on that wicket, both teams were not bowled out in their innings and both teams scored a combined total of over 350 runs in the day. If this pitch was heavily watered and dangerous then how did we manage to have such a good game?

"This was Littlehampton’s first draw this season, they could not manage to beat us as they may have thought they would be able to and this has stopped their winning streak, deeply hurting them and they are looking for any excuse to cover this up. They should be happy with what they got out of the game and move forward, just like we have."